The present invention relates to a novel composition used for inhibiting snow- or ice-accretion, that is to inhibit the gradual build-up of snow and/or ice.
Hitherto, in various application fields such as ships, marine constructions, airplanes, vehicles, houses or buildings and power transmission steel towers, a variety of ice-accretion inhibiting paints and snow-accretion inhibiting paints have been studied in order to prevent damage due to snow coverage and icing.
In these applications, the use of organopolysiloxanes has been frequently proposed. The organopolysiloxanes form a water-repellant surface because of their low surface energy due to hydrocarbon chains regularly oriented thereon, and are free from freezing of molecular movement even at a temperature of not more than xe2x88x9230xc2x0 C. because of their low glass transition temperature, thereby preventing hydrogen bonds from being formed therein upon icing. For this reason, the organopolysiloxanes are considered to exhibit a good snow-accretion inhibiting effect. Also, in order to improve a persistency of the snow- or ice-accretion inhibiting effect by preventing the organopolysiloxanes from suffering from bleed-out as well as peel-off upon removal of ice, compositions using a copolymer obtained by copolymerizing a specific organosilicon compound having a hydrolyzable silyl group with another monomer, in combination with a hydroxy-containing resin have been proposed (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 3-84069); and compositions using a specific alkoxydimethylsiloxane (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 2-147688). In addition, as a water-repellant coating composition, there has also been proposed the composition comprising an acrylic polymer, a silicone and a fluorine-containing polymer (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (KOKAI) No. 10-310740).
However, these conventionally known compositions have failed to exhibit sufficient snow- or ice-accretion inhibiting effects. Thus, during snowfall, it is necessary to attain a good snow- or ice-accretion inhibiting effect. On the other hand, when the ambient temperature increases after snowfall, snow deposited on the surfaces of building structures such as roofs gradually change to sticky snow having a large water content. This sticky snow adheres to the surfaces of the building structures and becomes difficult to peel off or remove. That is, after snowfall, there is a problem that the snow slipping-off property (reduced snow adherency) to assist in snow removal is deteriorated. Therefore, it is also necessary to improve the snow slipping-off (removal) property under such conditions. In particular, building structures having a gradient of not more than 45xc2x0 suffer from severe snow coverage and, therefore, are required to show improved snow slipping-off/removal properties.